Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Stunning news: No NASCAR in Montreal in 2013

WILL WE SEE NASCAR AT CANADIAN TIRE MOTORSPORT PARK NEXT YEAR?

This has not been a good year for a Montreal promoter of automobile racing in Canada.

In September, Octane Motorsports Events, Inc., cancelled the 2013 IZOD IndyCar Series race in Edmonton and filed for bankruptcy.

Today - Friday - Octane Management informed NASCAR that it would not promote the August, 2013,  Nationwide Series weekend at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal that over the last six years has also featured the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series and the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series.

As Octane Management holds the rights to auto racing at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, there is no immediate hope that NASCAR could find another promoter to continue racing in Montreal.

Octane promotes the Formula One Grand Prix of Canada and has a contract that runs through 2014.

There was one year remaining on the Indy race contract with the City of Edmonton when Octane Motorsports Events, Inc., announced the cancellation and filed for bankruptcy. Court papers in Montreal showed more than $5 million owing.

Octane Management operated on a year-to-year contractual basis with NASCAR, so no contract was yet in place for 2013.

Dave Stubbs of the Montreal Gazette reports that NASCAR was caught by surprise. As reported by Stubbs, NASCAR senior vice-president of racing operations Steve O’Donnell said from Daytona Beach:

“We certainly feel like we’ve had a great run in Montreal and certainly anticipated being back next year, if not many years beyond that. That was our intention.”

Stubbs reports that O'Donnell said Octane Management head François Dumontier told NASCAR he wanted a Sprint Cup race by itself or for the Nationwide race to be on the undercard of a Cup race in order to keep the event alive.

Said O’Donnell to the Gazette's Stubbs: “Canadian fans are huge supporters of NASCAR and it’s very important for us from a national-series perspective to be there. So we’ll certainly explore all avenues to do that. Who knows what the future brings? But it’s unfortunate it didn’t work out in Montreal.”

The 2013 Nationwide Series schedule has still not been issued. There is now officially a hole in it in August.

I was at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park last Saturday for the CASC-Ontario Region Celebration of Motorsport races and can report that work is progressing on the new Corporate Centre on driver's left at Turn Ten. All will be ready by spring and just about everything else about the legendary circuit formerly known as Mosport - sight lines, pavement paddock, RV parking spaces, and so-on - has been spruced up.

I suggest there is a very good chance that the Nationwide Series race originally scheduled for Montreal next August will just be moved 470 kilometres west.

We should have word on that very soon - in fact, maybe sometime this weekend.

One last thing: this will not be good news for the Indy car race(s) at the CNE next July.

Auto racing is all about buzz, and I can tell you where the buzz is going to be around here next year and it ain't gonna be at the Ex.

NASCAR: Twelve drivers, five words each; Schumi retires

I work with a guy, Bob Bishop, who’s a great fan of NASCAR racing.

A family man, he still finds time to travel to at least a race a season and is particularly partial to Darlington Raceway and the Bojangles’ Southern 500.

Bob has his own blog and on the eve of the Good Sam Roadside Assistance 500 (what a mouthful, eh?) at Talladega Superspeedway, he’s come up with a unique little feature entitled "Twelve drivers, five words each," in which he lists the 12 Chase for the Championship competitors and makes an editorial comment in five words (unlike some writers he knows – me, for example – who just go on, and on, and on).

Here are two examples:

Blue Deuce: Best driver not named Johnson

Junior: It’s not going to happen

Click here for the rest

Michael Schumacher did today in Japan what he should have done before Lewis Hamilton announced that he's taking his seat at Mercedes in 2013 and announced his retirement at the end of the season.

Click here for details

Good luck to him from now until the finish. Let's hope he exits the sport with dignity and grace and goes on to lead a long and fulfilling life as an ambassador for motorsport and an advocate for better driver training and driver safety.

I made mention the other day of the passing of Chris Economaki, editor and publisher emeritus of National Speed Sport News. In the tribute, I wrote about his appearance at the first Canadian Motorsports Expo in 2007 at the Toronto Congress Centre (it’s since moved to the International Centre).

Economaki appeared on a media panel at the Expo and entertained the audience with his wit and wisdom. He was a remarkable man who was interchangeable among the media; equally at ease while writing his column, talking on the radio or reporting from the pits at NASCAR, Indy car and Formula One races.

Glenn Butt, who promoted the first Expo with his father, Ed (Inside Track Motorsport News magazine is now a partner), emailed me a photo of members of that elite panel that he took at the conclusion of that first presentation - and don’t we all look snazzy in our Motorsports Expo jackets?

From left, in the photo above are: Erik Tomas of Raceline Radio, yours truly, Chris Economaki, Greg MacPherson of Inside Track and Tim Miller of the Hamilton Spectator and Toronto Star Wheels.

Services for Economaki were held earlier this week in New Jersey and an old friend of his, Jim Bray of Brantford, the second Canadian to qualify and race in the Daytona 500, flew in to pay his respects.

Bray was surprised that there was nobody from NASCAR among the 100 or so mourners. "I had a chat with Roger (Penske) and Skip (Matczak, a noted short-track racer) says hello," reported Bray. "And Foyt (A.J.) was a pallbearer. But I didn’t see anybody from NASCAR; just short-track racers and Indy people were there."

The results of that final CASC-Ontario Region Formula 1600 race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park are now official and the 2012 series champion is Michael Adams of Courtice.

Caitlin Johnston of Orangeville, who was tied with Adams going into that final race last Sunday and who led most of the race until she was knocked out of second place and into a tire wall by Adams on the last corner of the last lap, was unable to successfully appeal the result.

Both drivers had wonderful seasons. It’s too bad it ended like it did but, as they say, that’s racing.

Meantime, I have to correct an error I made when I wrote about this series in my Monday entry. It is no longer called "Formula Ford," as Honda engines are also allowed, so the correct name is F1600.

(However, I suggest they go back to the drawing board on that name too, because although the Ford engines are 1600 cubic centimetres, the Honda engines are only 1500 CCs.)

'Doctor to the drivers,' Prof. Sid Watkins dies

When Prof. Sid Watkins, who died Tuesday in London, wrote the dedication to his book Life At The Limit , Triumph and Tragedy in Formula One in 1996, he included – along with Jackie Stewart and Louis Stanley – the name Hugh Scully.

At the time, Scully was chief of staff and deputy surgeon-in-chief at Toronto General Hospital, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, president of the Ontario Medical Association and founder of the Ontario Race Physicians Association.

Scully and Watkins – who served 26 years as the FIA Formula One Safety and Medical Delegate, head of the Formula One on-track medical team and first responder in case of a crash – were best friends and pals with a passion for motorsport.

Scully got involved in trying to make racing safer after a personal friend, Austrian F1 driver Helmut Koinigg, was killed at Watkins Glen in 1973 shortly after spending a week as a houseguest of Scully’s in Toronto. Watkins, a London neurosurgeon, was approached in 1978 by Bernie Ecclestone to help improve medical facilities at Grand Prix circuits.

Watkins and Scully worked side-by-side for years, along with American motorsport doctors Steve Olvey and Terry Trammell, on the International Council of Motorsport Science to improve safety in racing car design, restraint systems, helmets and protective clothing.

Those men are generally credited — particularly Watkins — with the huge improvements in safety over the last half-century in which world-class motor racing went from a highly dangerous pursuit to one that, today, is relatively safe.

Scully is now president of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame and, in 2011, was instrumental in the decision to induct Prof. Watkins in the International category.

Watkins was unable to attend the ceremony because he was starting to suffer ill health. In recent weeks, his condition deteriorated and he was admitted to hospital in England.

On Sunday night, Scully flew to London to be with his friend. He was just in time.

Watkins was revered by the drivers and the F1 establishment because of his dedication and commitment to their health and safety. His most famous friendship was with the late Ayrton Senna, and the first chapter of his book deals with that awful weekend at Imola in 1994 when Rubens Barrichello crashed violently and both Roland Ratzenberger and Senna lost their lives.

In the book, Watkins writes (after telling Senna that Ratzenburger was dead):

"Ayrton was beside himself; he had not been close to death at a circuit before. . . . He broke down and cried on my shoulder. After all, why shouldn’t he? We had been close friends for many years, we’d fished together, we’d stayed with each other’s families– he was a part of my family – we had talked and worried together over many things common to us both in racing and in life.

"Now his head was on my shoulder and my arm was around him. I felt that I had to tell him what I thought. ‘Ayrton, why don’t you withdraw from racing tomorrow ? I don’t think you should do it. In fact, why don’t you give it up altogether? What else do you need to do? You have been World Champion three times, you are obviously the quickest driver. Give it up and let’s go fishing.’ He was silent. I went on. ‘I don’t think the risk is worth continuing – pack it in.’ He gave me a very steady look and, now calm, he said, ‘Sid, there are certain things over which we have no control. I cannot quit, I have to go on.’ Those were the last words he said to me."

As the news of Watkins’s death spread, drivers and others in F1 paid tribute, including Barrichello, Martin Donnelly, Mika Hakkinen, Gerhard Berger and team founder Frank Williams who all credited Watkins with saving their lives after they suffered serious accidents.

McLaren chairman Ron Dennis said Watkins was one of Formula One’s "true greats."

"No, he wasn’t a driver," said Dennis. "No, he wasn’t an engineer. No, he wasn’t a designer. He was a doctor and it’s probably fair to say that he did more than anyone, over the years, to make Formula One as safe as it is today."

I count myself most fortunate to have interviewed Prof. Watkins before he was inducted into the Canadian Hall of Fame. In an overseas telephone chat that was kind of all over the map, we talked about subjects as varied as safety in F1 and whether Sebastien Vettel is as good as everybody thinks he is.

We were talking about Vettel when he suddenly said: "Wait. Let me tell you about Nelson Piquet. Now, there was a naughty boy."

The context was this: Who, in Grand Prix racing today, is a really good bloke? Who’s got the best sense of humour? Who’s a cut-up?

And Watkins had replied, after thinking for a moment: "Barrichello, I suppose, is the most fun. He’s the one who’s usually up to the most mischief these days. But none of them holds a candle to Piquet."

Nelson Piquet won three world championships but is remembered almost as much for being a practical joker. Watkins remembered two incidents as if they happened yesterday, instead of in the 1980s.

"One time, the FIA president, Jean-Marie Balestre, was making an important speech on safety," Watkins said. "As he was talking, Piquet was standing beside him, emptying a litre of carbonated water into the pocket of his suit jacket.

"Another time, Balestre was standing near the front row of the grid. Piquet was standing behind him. Suddenly, a hand came up between his legs and grabbed him by the presidential balls!

"But Balestre wasn’t angry; he thoroughly enjoyed Piquet because he made people laugh."

I put it to the professor: what is the big difference between racing in the 1950s and ’60s, when many drivers were killed, and today? Is it the HANS device? Circuit design? What?

"There are two factors that you can’t separate," he’d said. "First are the improvements made in the construction of the car. The actual technique and materials used to construct the monocoque — carbon fibre, for instance — have saved many lives.

"The other is the control of fire. When I started in the 1960s, fire was a constant danger. In the Seventies, there was a fire at the Peterson accident (when Ronnie Peterson died at Monza), and Niki Lauda was badly burned (at the Nurburgring).

"There was a fire at the Paletti accident in 1982 (at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal, in which Riccardo Paletti was killed) and then there was a fire at Imola with Gerhard Berger in 1989.

"But since then, we haven’t had a problem with fuel fires and that’s been an enormous step forward."

Watkins made mention of "starting in the 1960s," when he was a surgeon at University Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y.

"I used to go to the Can-Am races at Watkins Glen, the SCCA races there and, of course, the Grand Prix," he said. "The facilities were pretty primitive.

"For the Grand Prix, I used to take a team, just in case we had any bad trouble. I used to take an orthopedic surgeon, a chest guy, a plastic surgeon and an anesthetist. We used to take our own kit, just in case, because there was virtually no equipment in the medical centre at Watkins Glen. You brought your own stuff and you took it away.

"We were put to the test on more than one occasion. It was a good thing we were there."

It was during that period when he would travel to Mosport and Le Circuit-St. Jovite to enjoy the races — "I went as a spectator" — that he met "my great friend," Dr. Scully.

I asked Watkins if it was harder to drive a racing car in the "old days" as compared to today.

"I think it’s different," he said. "In the old days, they had physical demands. There was a general lack of security . . . it was a different level of driving. Nowadays, they’re extremely well protected; there’s so much automatic function on the cars . . . they’re really projectiles.

"In Clark’s and Stewart’s time, the mortality rate was pretty high. You had to have enormous courage to go racing every other weekend, knowing that you might not come back. Since 1994, we’ve been extremely fortunate (there hasn’t been a fatal accident in F1 since Senna died) and I don’t think the drivers even think about that anymore. It’s out of mind."

Watkins laughed when I asked whether Sebastien Vettel is the "real deal," as good as Jim Clark was in his era and Michael Schumacher has been in recent years.

"He’s obviously a wonderful driver, but (the professor’s voice rose here) "he’s also got a wonderful car. If you want to talk about drivers in poor cars, think of Stirling Moss, who drove all sorts of vehicles and drove them extraordinarily well, particularly when they weren’t the fastest.

"It’s a different dimension, really. People like Senna could make a bad car go quick. And so could Jimmy.

"Recently, we’ve seen Michael struggling. If you put Michael in the Red Bull, he’d be away like a shot! So we don’t know about Vettel because we haven’t seen him in a bad car yet."

Prof. Sid Watkins, doctor to the drivers and a friend to many, was 84 years old when he passed. He leaves his wife, four sons and two daughters.

The photo in the article is of Prof. Sid Watkins and Jackie Stewart in 1992 when presented the Labatt's Safety Award.

Grand Am buys ALMS, wins sports car war

The announcement today – Wednesday – of a new North American sports car racing series could either be good news for the sport or bad news and I’m betting it will be more the latter than the former.

The American Le Mans Series and the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series will officially become one when the announcement is made. Although initial reports talked about a merger, it has since been confirmed that what’s happening, in fact, is the sale of the ALMS to Grand Am.

A merger is one thing. A merger is when two parties come together to create something that includes the best of both. A sale is when one party purchases the other and gets to call all the shots.

Much has been written in recent days about what the idealists in the crowd would like to see happen with this new series. The idealists kinda like the way the ALMS has been working and would dearly love to see the GT Class, in particular, included in the new series.

But I have news. The new series will be the present Grand Am Series with maybe – maybe – more participants. The Grand Am organization, which is owned by the France family/NASCAR, is not going to throw any of its current competitors under the bus in order to make anybody on the "other side" feel better. It’ll be the Grand Am way, or the highway.

I did an interview a few years ago with the saviour of Mosport (now Canadian Tire Motorsport Park) and the founder of the American Le Mans Series, Don Panoz. The ALMS and the Grand Am were both formed in the late 1990s as a result of the mess made of North American sports car racing by a guy named Andy Evans, and have been seen as competitors in much the same way as the Indy Racing League and the Champ Car World Series were during their "civil war."

During the interview, I asked Panoz if he’d ever tried to "make peace" with the Grand Am so that there could be one, great, sports car series on this continent and he replied that he had.

"We’ve talked from time to time," he said, and then asked to go off the record. "They want to run everything," he said. "They want to do it all their way and I won’t go for that."

Apparently, Don Panoz has now reached a point where he will go for that.

Which is understandable, considering the way the ALMS has evolved in recent years and which has, as a result, undoubtedly cost him a lot of money.

Sports car racing is made up of classes, with the unlimited prototype class – called Prototype 1, or P1 – at the top of the heap. The problem is that for several years now, there has not been any manufacturer factory teams in P1 and the class has been propped up by privateers.

While the ALMS has prospered in the Grand Touring class, with factory entries from Corvette, Ferrari, BMW and others producing tight, exciting races, the lack of glamour-puss entries in P1 from manufacturers like Audi has hurt the series.

Although some might disagree, the decision to brand the ALMS as a "green" racing series has had mixed results. Auto racing is loud and gritty (despite the best efforts of F1) and is most popular when presented that way. Many people were put off by the goody two-shoes promotion of the series as being "clean racing."

And then there was the disastrous decision two years ago to put all of the races on the Internet, rather than continue on live television. Suddenly, the ALMS became an invisible series to all but truly hard-core fans.

It didn’t help that the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series races were all broadcast live on Speed Channel.

Now, it’s always been apparent that the ALMS is a bigger draw than the Grand Am when it comes to people actually going to the races. Last January’s Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona Grand Am race at Daytona Speedway attracted exactly zero spectators. None. Two months later at the ALMS 12 Hours of Sebring, the crowd was so big that it was difficult to get inside the circuit.

So the Grand Am organization might be inclined to accept some ALMS help in the area of marketing and promotion of the new series, but that’s about all.

Sure, some of the ALMS tracks – Canadian Tire MP, Lime Rock, etc. – will be part of the new series, but other than that, the ALMS as we’ve know it will soon be nothing but a memory.

And although there might be some platitudes mouthed about continuing the great traditions of the ALMS and its connection to the Automobile Club de l’Ouest and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, there is no way NASCAR will be taking direction from anyone, much less some sports car club in France.

Grand Am/NASCAR is the big dog now and they’ll do things their way. They won the war, so we’d better get used to it.

Danica Patrick has to start fighting back

If Danica Patrick wants to survive in NASCAR, she’s going to have to start fighting back.

She’s been wrecked, or nearly wrecked, in every Sprint Cup race she’s started this year.

Saturday night, it was obvious she was just getting too uppity – it was late in the race and she was on the lead lap and closing in on a strong top 20 finish (in the two Cup races she’d actually finished earlier this year, she was no threat to anybody) – so Regan Smith just went up the track and ran into her for no particular reason other than she was there and he felt like taking her out.

Now, NASCAR’s veterans think it’s hilarious to initiate rookies, particularly drivers who aren’t regulars.  But it’s time for her to show them that enough is enough.

My advice to her today is simple: the next Sprint Cup start she gets, dump somebody. Pick a target and put him into the wall. Just do it. Send a warning to every driver out there: mess with me and I’m coming right back at ya.

Her boss, Tony Stewart, would approve, I’m sure. He let Matt Kenseth know how he felt on Saturday night. Yes, it was a little over the top when he threw his helmet at Kenseth after the two of them got together and crashed, but you can bet that Kenseth will have second thoughts about getting too close to Tony Stewart again this season.

And yes, I know Matt Kenseth is a tough guy in his own right and Tony Stewart didn’t exactly throw the fear of God into him with his little hissy fit. However, don’t ever kid yourself that Matt Kenseth won’t be thinking from now on about the possibility of getting wrecked every time Stewart goes to pass him or he goes to pass Stewart. Intimidation is the name of the game in big-league stock car racing and everybody has to learn how to play and that includes Danica Patrick.

Of course, if she starts fighting back on the track, that could open up another can of worms in the pits.

NASCAR drivers have been known to get physical. Not often, but it happens. Would anybody be foolish enough to take a swing at Patrick? Would she be foolish enough to take a swing at another driver? It’s not likely to happen – but it could.

And here’s another thing that some of those drivers would be wise to internalize: do any of them really want to be the driver whose deliberate actions result in her suffering a serious injury? Or worse?

The only time NASCAR will ever be on the front page of the New York Times is if Danica Patrick wins a race or, God forbid, what happened to Dan Wheldon happens to her.

I guarantee you that would be a disaster for NASCAR.

It is 2012 and sponsors might want to be associated with car racing on one hand but, on the other, they sure don’t want to be associated with a sport in which people are killed. Ten years ago, or 20, it was okay. Not any more.

IZOD has disappeared completely from the IndyCar series and that came about precisely because of what happened to Wheldon. The only reason IZOD’s name is still associated with that series is because of the contract.

And the same thing could happen to NASCAR if anything happened to Patrick.

Racing is racing and she’s out there taking her chances with everybody else. And when you have cars travelling in a pack at 150 or 200 miles an hour, negative things can and do happen.

But the next time somebody like Regan Smith sees Patrick and figures she’s an easy target, she might be – but to then take advantage of the situation might wind up doing far more harm to the sport than anybody realizes.

Patrick can help herself, and the sport, by letting everybody know now that it's time to lay off.

Oh, yeah: Denny Hamlin survived Bristol to win the Cup race. Jimmie Johnson was second and Jeff Gordon was third. Click here for story and results. There are two races left until the Chase field is set. Time for some people to get serious.

Friday night, Joey Logano won the Nationwide Series race – his sixth in that series this season. Click here for story and results.

Next weekend’s TV schedule illustrates perfectly why Randy Bernard is so keen to get IZOD IndyCar Series races off of TSN and onto one of Rogers Sportsnet ‘s national channels next year.

The Baltimore Grand Prix goes to the post next Sunday at 2:30 p.m. TSN has CFL football on the main channel that afternoon and U.S. Open tennis on TSN2. So they’re full up, it appears.

Rogers has a national channel plus four regional channels and their purchase of The Score this weekend will soon give them a second national channel.

So I will be surprised if all of the Indy car races in 2013 aren’t available live and in colour on one of Sportsnet’s national channels and I trust Bernard won’t sign a contract until he has that guarantee.

Meantime, I will likely listen to the Baltimore race in my car on my XM Satellite radio. Mike King and Davey Hamilton do a good job announcing. I discovered this when I was driving home from the drag races at Toronto Motorsport Park on a Saturday night in June and tuned into the Indy car race from Iowa Speedway.

It was kinda nice that night, bombing along Highway 6 South with the cruise control and the radio both on. The drag races had been terrific, the moon was bright and although I’d hoped to be home in time to watch the race on TV, the King-Hamilton broadcast on XM meant I didn’t miss a thing.

Now, I don’t want to be too critical of TSN. They reacted really well last year when I complained that they had filler stuff on TSN2 the second day of Indianapolis 500 time trials. Low and behold, somebody was paying attention and they threw out all the recorded stuff and put the time trials on live.

And next Sunday, they are televising the F1 race from Belgium in the morning and the very important NASCAR race from Atlanta on Sunday night. So thank you for that.

But do we really need 11 hours of U.S. Open tennis? Starting at 11 a.m. and continuing to 11 p.m. except for an hour of SportsCentre at 6? And this isn’t even the finals. We’re talking the third round here.

Is there no way to sneak in two hours of car racing at 2:30 in the afternoon (we can skip all the pre-race stuff)? Except for the people watching the race, I betcha hardly anyone will notice. . .

Meantime, the race from Sonoma yesterday – which was shown live at 4 p.m. on TSN2 (hooraaayyy!!!) – featured some great driving (winner Ryan Briscoe was perfect from start to finish and his pit crew was even better, essentially winning him the race at the last pit stop), some really sloppy driving (Helio Castroneves clipping Scott Dixon, Alex Tagliani knocking Ryan Hunter-Reay out of contention) and one of the scariest crashes seen in recent years.

Will Power finished second and, with two races remaining in the 2011 season, seems to be heading toward his first national IndyCar championship. He currently holds a 36-point lead over second-place Hunter-Reay with Castroneves five points further back. Dario Franchitti was third and F1 refugee Rubens Barrichello recorded a career-high IndyCar race finish of fourth.

The crash featured veteran Sebastien Bourdais and rookie Josef Newgarden. Bourdais lost his steering and, unable to control his car, essentially pushed Newgarden off the track and into a retaining wall that was protected by several rows of tires.

As ex-racer, team owner and colour commentator Robbie Buhl noted, the combination of the tires and the HANS device likely saved Newgarden from serious harm.

He did suffer an injury to one of his fingers because he held onto the steering wheel instead of letting it go. Remember the ribbing Danica took when she crashed for the first time in NASCAR and an in-car camera showed her letting go? Now they all do, because there’s a reason for it and Josef Newgarden’s broken finger illustrates exactly why.

James Hinchcliffe of Oakville had a rotten weekend and dropped out with mechanical problems. He was credited with 26^th place in the 27-car race.

One last thing about the Indy car race. Hunter-Reay was the victim when Tagliani went up the inside during a late-race restart and couldn’t stop, hitting RHR, spinning him around and really hurting his chances for the championship. But moments later, RHR ran into E.J. Viso and spun him around.

After the race, Hunter-Reay went to see Tagliani to "discuss" the incident between them. I was kinda hoping Viso would show up to give hell to Hunter-Reay for running into him – but no such luck.

Oh, Chevrolet clinched the engine manufacturer's championship when Briscoe crossed the finish line and Simon Pagenaud won rookie of the year. However, Pagenaud is a former Champ Car World Series driver and a veteran of the American Le Mans Series so, in my books, he ain’t no rookie.

Click here for full story and results.

Other weekend racing:

– Uxbridge native Alex Welsh captured his first career Canadian Pro Superbike victory Sunday at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. It was one of the most exciting Superbike finishes in series history.

Jordan Szoke of Brantford, who won his record eighth national title on Saturday, finished second and Kevin Lacombe of St-Cesaire, Que., finished third.

The three riders went back-and-forth for all 20 laps before Welsh went low on the last turn to squeeze past and take the checkered flag.

Lacombe was later disqualified for a technical violation. Bodhi Edie of Warman, Sask., was elevated to a podium finish.

In Moto GP action at the circuit in Brno, Czech Republic, Dani Pedrosa beat Jorge Lorenzo to the line in another thriller.

By the way, the photo at the top of this report was taken by John Walker and shows Alex Welsh leading Jordan Szoke and the rest of the Canadian Pro Superbike field.

– Canada’s Robert Wickens played bumper cars on the first lap of the German Touring Car Series (DTM) race at Zandvoort, Holland, on Sunday and a 12^th-place qualifying effort for Mercedes went for naught.

As Autosport.com reported, Wickens and Miguel Molina collided twice on the run to the first corner; the Spaniard ending up beached in the gravel at the Tarzan turn, while the Canadian was spun by Christian Vietoris two turns later and collected within seconds by Rahel Frey. All three retired.

The race was won by Edoardo Mortara in an Audi. Canadian Bruno Spengler finished sixth for BMW to keep his championship hopes alive.

– Audi won the manufacturers championship in the first year of the new FIA World Endurance Championship when Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler drove their Audi e-tron quattro the 2012 Six Hours of Silverstone on Sunday.

– It’s hardly worth mentioning . . . but Sebastien Loeb won his seventh World Rally Championship event of the season, and his fifth straight, when he won the German Rally for the ninth time at the weekend. When I say it’s hardly worth mentioning, what I mean is: who else?

Jerry Grant, Gordon Harrison united in death

 

GORDON HARRISON IS ONE OF TWO MARSHALS (left of photo) BESIDE MOSPORT TRACK

When the news was emailed to the world Monday afternoon that 10-time Indianapolis 500 starter Jerry Grant had died, the first thing I thought about was Mosport in June, 1966, and a guy named Gordon Harrison.

At the time, Grant was a hard-charging sports car racer from the Pacific Northwest who’d made two starts at Indy but had yet to give NASCAR a try. He was a barnstorming racer who’d enter just about any sports car race anywhere and one of his stops that year was at Mosport for the Player’s 200.

He was driving the same Lola T70 he’d raced to victory two weeks previously in May in a U.S. Road Racing Championship event at the Bridgehampton circuit on Long Island, N.Y. The competition there had been stiff, but the Player’s race attracted more of an international entry list and he was up against drivers like Bruce McLaren, Chris Amon and Jackie Stewart as well as Canadians Ludwig Heimrath, Eppie Wietzes, Nat Adams, John Cannon and John Cordts, among others.

Shortly after the start, coming down the hill from Turn 2 on the opening lap and heading toward Turn 3, a section of the course that’s known internationally as one of the hardest to navigate in all of global road racing (in fact, the famous German F1 and sports car driver Manfred Winkelhock met his end there), Grant lost control of the Lola and went flying off the circuit.

Unfortunately, Harrison – a non-professional racing driver who was acting as a track-side marshal that day – was standing right in the path of the car and was killed instantly. He was 37 years old.

Grant was taken to hospital suffering from shock, although it was reported that he was not aware at the time that Harrison was dead. A photo of the dazed-looking Grant, wrapped in a blanket and sitting on the ground beside his wrecked car, was sent by wire around the world.

It’s said that auto racing is a dangerous sport but it’s nowhere near as dangerous for any of the participants these days as it was back then. Look at the picture at the top of this column, taken during the pace lap of that Player's 200 on June 4, 1966, and one of the two marshals beside the track at left is Gordon Harrison.

Guys (and women, too) like Harrison thought nothing of standing trackside to display the blue passing flag to racers who were holding up faster cars behind them.

In fact, Harrison and two other marshals at the time, Wayne Jeffery and Gord Salisbury, were called"Bull Fighters" for their skill and daring standing almost on the racing surface to use their flags to keep the contest fair.

As a result of the dreadful accident that day, the marshals were moved back from the track and nowadays at road courses like Mosport (now called Canadian Tire Motorsport Park), many of them do their flagging from platforms.

Grant, of course, went on to become the first driver to turn a lap in an Indy car at more than 200 miles an hour but, like contemporary Lloyd Ruby, he had horrible luck on the race track.

For instance, earlier in 1966, at the 12 Hours of Sebring, he and co-driver Dan Gurney were winning when their Ford GT conked out. The same thing happened to them that year at the 24 Hours of Le Mans when a mechanical issue sidelined the car when they were leading at the 21-hour mark.

In NASCAR, he went from 43^rd to fifth in the 1967 Daytona 500 before dropping out . The year before, he finished fifth in the Dixie 400 at Atlanta.

Now, in all the online obituaries and tributes, much is being made of his disqualification from the 1972 Indy 500. The official version as to why this happened was sent out Monday afternoon by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway media department:

"Driving the purple Mystery Eagle as teammate to Bobby Unser on Dan Gurney's All-American Racers team, Grant led at the 188-lap mark when he had to pit to replace a tire which was losing air. Instead of pitting in his stall, he went to the adjoining one of Unser, who had retired much earlier in the day. Whether or not Grant actually took on any fuel from Unser's refueling tank is up for discussion, but the hoses were momentarily hooked up, and it became known that the tank in his own pit was apparently empty, the maximum allotment of 275 gallons having been exhausted.

"While Grant did finish the 500 miles, taking the checkered flag in second place behind Mark Donohue, officials subsequently disallowed Grant's final 12 laps, thus dropping him from second to 12^th."

Wikipedia reports that Grant "overshot his pit" and that’s what put him in Unser’s stall.

And I say baloney. I was right there in the room shortly after the race when Gurney was trying to convince U.S. Auto Club officials that, yes, Grant had taken on a bit of fuel from Unser’s tank but, honest officer, it had all been a big mistake because they really, really thought Grant had been connected to his own tank.

Grant, who knew the jig was up, sat on a sofa with a bemused look on his face, his balaclava perched on the top of his head (which looked very cool but covered up the fact that he had rapidly thinning hair and wasn’t wearing his usual hairpiece).

The fact of the matter is that Jerry Grant had to pit because he was out of fuel. He had used up all the fuel in his own pit tank. He had to get more to finish the race and the team directed him to stop in Unser’s pit because that was where the fuel was. Sure, they changed a tire but that was essentially to cover up the fact they were adding fuel. They were just hoping nobody would notice.

Gurney, one of the greatest racing drivers of his generation, was not above trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes. At the 1967 F1 Grand Prix of Canada at Mosport, he convinced race officials to allow him extra practice time because, he said, there was a bad vibration in the front of his car and he needed the time to determine if it was a wheel problem or whether something was seriously the matter with the chassis. (You could do those sorts of things in those days.)

Of course, he ‘fessed up years later that, in fact, he was trying to determine whether to change the engine in his car and his "tire test" had been nothing more than a ruse to give him more time to make up his mind. . . .

Jerry Grant was 77 when he died on Sunday. Like so many from that era, he could drive and race just about anything, and race it well. There’s not many of them left.

Postscript:

I mentioned Jerry Grant in a column I wrote a month or so ago about bicycle helmets. I wrote that he’d influenced me because he was a pioneer in the wearing of a crash helmet while riding a motorcycle. I hadn’t thought of him in years.

Also, four days before that fateful day in 1966, Jackie Stewart and Jerry Grant had survived an opening lap pileup at Indianapolis that damaged half the cars in the 33-car starting field. They'd lobbied for a standing start in the Player’s 200 instead of the rolling start that had been planned, arguing that it would be safer. Organizers left it up to a vote of drivers and they lost, 16 to 11. Whether the bunched-up field as the result of the "flying start" had anything to do with Grant losing control on that first lap is something we’ll never know.

'Glen duel makes case for more NASCAR road races

On Saturday, Toronto Star Wheels published a cover story by freelance writer Sylvia Proudfoot about Toronto driver Paul Dalla Lana, an ultra-successful businessman, husband and father who discovered auto racing later in life than most. In case you missed it, here’s the link.

The news today is that Saturday evening, Dalla Lana and co-driver (and coach) Bill Auberlen finished first in the GT Class of the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series race at Watkins Glen, N.Y. For Auberlen, it was his 85^th race win and his 180^th podium finish in the Grand Am series.

Dalla Lana and Auberlen have scored eight top-five GT finishes in the nine Rolex races they’ve driven together in 2012. They have two wins and four podium finishes in their No. 94 Turner Motorsport BMW M3.

They are now second in the GT championship standings, with three races remaining. The first of those three takes place at Montreal next weekend.

Now, there are exactly two road course races in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season and none in the Chase for the Championship and I really want to know how come?

With the the exception of Daytona, Talladega, Bristol, Richmond, Martinsville and one or two others, why aren’t all the other Sprint Cup races on road courses?

You want excitement? You want drama? I give you yesterday’s race at Watkins Glen as a prime example of what NASCAR racing could be - and mostly isn’t.

You want boring? You want predictable? I give you Las Vegas, California, Homestead, Loudon, Kansas, Indianapolis, Pocono – and I could go on and on.

Marcos Ambrose won that edge-of-your-seat nailbiter at the Glen yesterday, with Brad Keselowski, and Jimmie Johnson winding up second and third. Clint Bowyer was fourth and Sam Hornish Jr. (and ain’t that a kick in the pants!) finished fifth, ahead of Greg Biffle, Kyle Bush, Matt Kenseth, Regan Smith and Martin Truex Jr.

When the smoke had cleared (literally) Johnson is leading the points standings with Kenseth and Biffle right behind. Dale Earnhardt Jr., who’s been leading the standings of late, is now back in fourth after a 28th-place finish yesterday.

Now, essentially what happened on the last lap is that Keselowski, who was running second to Kyle Busch with Ambrose third, hit Busch and spun him around. This resulted in damage to the front of Keselowski’s car and, although he gave as good as he got for the rest of the lap, Ambrose had a better handling car and was able to get past him at the end.

The thing that impressed me the most is that both Ambrose and Keselowski gave each other room to race. Several times that last lap, they were both off the track and each time the one who got back on the tarmac first allowed the other driver to get back on too.

Yes, they were pushing and bumping and rubbing and all the other good things that NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers do but, in the end, they both fought fair.

Here, take a look yourself.

Ambrose has had more than 140 Sprint Cup starts and now has two wins – yesterday was his second and they both have come on the road course at the Glen. That ties him for wins (also on road courses) with Juan Pablo Montoya, but Montoya has had more than 200 starts.

Now, I know that NASCAR and the majority of its fans would not go for as many road course races as somebody like me would like. But surely, after watching yesterday’s slugfest at Watkins Glen, they would have to agree that several more could be inserted into the regular schedule and at least one into the Chase.

I mean, do they have to go to Loudon twice, to Phoenix twice, to Kansas twice? Of course they don’t - and right there you have room for three more road-course races.

Other weekend racing:

Keselowski also finished second in the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Watkins Glen on the weekend. He couldn’t catch the winner, Carl Edwards, but held off Sam Hornish Jr., who was third (and what a weekend he had!). Danica Patrick recorded her worst finish in NASCAR racing: dead last – although it wasn’t her fault. She was just driving along, going into the first corner on the first lap and Ryan Truex went sliding by on the grass and slid back onto the track right in front of her and stopped. She had nowhere to go. Ron Fellows of Mississauga, incidentally, finished fifth. Fellows, Patrick as well as Jacques Villeneuve, Andrew Ranger, Alex Tagliani and Patrick Carpentier will all be in action next weekend at Circuit-Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal. . . .

Jordan Szoke of Brantford won the Mopar Canadian Superbike Championship round at Le Circut-Mont Tremblant on Sunday and moved closer to clinching his astounding and unprecedented eighth (that’s 8^th) national motorycle championship. He took the lead on lap 4 of the 12-lap race aboard his Waznie Racing/Parts Canada/BMW Motorrad/Canada BMW S1000RR bike and was never headed. Matthew McBride of Mississauga finished second and Jodi Christie of Keene, Ont., who’s second in the standings, was third. The 2012 season will conclude in two weeks with a double-header at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, north of Bowmanville. . . .

Returning to Watkins Glen for a moment, Ryan Dalziel and Lucas Luhr won the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series race Saturday, with Sebastien Bourdais and Alex Powpow second and Scott Pruett with Memo Rojas third – all wheeling Riley Daytona Prototype cars with the first two powered by Fords and the third-place car by a BMW motor. As reported above, Auberlen and Dalla Lana were the first GT car; they finished eighth overall. The AIM Autosport of Woodbridge Team Ferrari FXDD with drivers Jeff Segal and Emil Assentato still lead the GT standings but had a disastrous race with a first-lap crash leading to a lengthy pit stop and a seventh-place class finish. . . .

At the 52^nd Knoxville Nationals, which is the Indy 500 and Monaco Grand Prix of sprint car racing all rolled into one, Donny Schatz won his sixth A Main in the last seven years and his second straight but the big story of the night was that for the first time since the 1970s, the race rolled off without either Steve Kinser or Sammy Swindell in the 24-car field. Local racer and Knoxville track champion Brian Brown finished second, with Craig Dollansky third, Kraig Kinser fourth and Jason Meyers fifth. As well as Kinser, who hasn’t missed the feature since 1977, and Swindell, who’s been in every race in 1975, four-time Knoxville champion Danny Lasoski also failed to qualify. . . .

Sticking with sprint cars, Dain Naida of Tecumseh, Mich., won the Southern Ontario Sprints feature at Brighton Speedway Saturday. Chris Jones of Carrying Place and Jamie Collard of Burford, Ont., was third. . . .

At Calabogie Motorsports Park, Kyle Marcelli of Barrie drove his Pfaff Automotive entry to victory in both Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada by Michelin series races but since he is a professional racing driver (the American Le Mans Series), he can’t collect points.

At the end of the weekend (and the season, it turns out), Jean-Frederick Laberge is the Platinum champion, Bruce Gregory won the Gold championship and Robert Seitz was tops in Silver. I understand new Porsches are already being ordered up for next season. . . .

Big holiday weekend of racing - in person and on TV

SYNDIE HYDE (left), KATIE WARD AND MELANIE SIMMONS

There is lots of racing appealing to every taste on tap locally and on television this weekend. Only Formula One will be MIA.

At Toronto Motorsports Park, the South Coast Community Weekend will take place on the Cayuga Dragway and action will start Friday and continue through Sunday. This is the fourth drag-racing event at the Cayuga-area facility this summer and it’s pretty much a bargain.

Complimentary spectator event tickets are available at businesses in Cayuga and the surrounding area, or by contacting some of the racing associations that will be participating — the Quick 32 Sportsman Series, the Pro Modified Racing Association or the Pro Bike & Sled Series.

General parking is $20 per carload and weekend camping is available.

Now, as is the case with most other forms of motorsport, women are seen as equal partners with men and that is certainly the case with the Quick 32 Sportsman Series presented by NAPA Auto Parts. Three of the top drivers in the series are experienced female racers who take a back seat to no man when they approach the start line.

Melanie Simmons (above, right), Katie Ward and Sydnie Hyde are all strong racers in the series and all three have increased their efforts since the series began four seasons ago.

Simmons, from Orillia, drives the Toyrific Racing Top Dragster. With a No. 1 qualifier and quarter-final finish at the IHRA National Event at the Grand Bend Motorplex several weeks ago, she is able to blast down the quarter-mile in the mid six-second range at more than 200 miles an hour.

Ward has stepped into a faster car this season. The Orangeville racer, a driver for the Hinbest Racing team, started in the Quick 32 Sportsman Series with a normally-aspirated Top Dragster but for 2012 she is co-driving the team’s other car, a supercharged Top Dragster, with Michael Hinbest. This car is one of the quickest in the series and Ward has also recorded runs in the mid-six second range.

Now in her second year of Quick 32 Sportsman Series racing, Hyde drives the Hyde Racing Top Dragster, a new car for her this year with a huge, 740-cubic inch engine. The Stratford racer has run the quarter-mile in the high-six second bracket.

Simmons and Hyde started their racing in Junior Dragsters and progressed to the faster cars. Ward started racing in 2010 in an eight-second Quick 32 Top Dragster.

All three women are dedicated ambassadors of the sport and take part in off-track promotions, media interviews and autograph sessions.

For information about Toronto Motorsports Park in Cayuga,  call (905) 772-0303 or visit online.

Now, talking about complimentary admission tickets, it won’t cost anybody anything to attend this weekend’s CASC-Ontario Region races at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park.

Just go to the CASC website and click to download tickets for Saturday and Sunday. Or click here. And you can print out as many as you like, which makes it a great way to take the family somewhere for the weekend and not have to spend an arm and a leg.

Racing in five divisions organized by BARC will start Saturday at 8:30 in the morning and Sunday at 9 a.m. Classes in action will include Vintage/Historic, G70 Limited, F1200, F1600, Formula Libre, GT Sprints and so-on.

Over at Delaware Speedway just outside London, the International Supermodified Association will be racing Friday and Saturday nights. As anybody who’s read my stuff knows, these are my guys.

The supers (left, and thanks to the Delaware website for the photo) are the fastest short-track racing cars on the planet and the ground shakes when the pack flies by. It’s a professional class, so the purse is healthy, which means admission is not free. An adult single-night ticket costs $40 but there are family passes and weekend passes available that make it more affordable. Check with the Delaware website for details. Or click here.

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is back in action at Pocono Raceway this Sunday and Jimmie Johnson will be out to show everybody that his dominating performance last weekend in the Brickyard 400 was a precursor to him winning his sixth championship in seven years.

Of course, defending Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart, fresh off his World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series victory at Ohsweken Speedway on Tuesday night, will be out to put a stop to that, as will all the other Sprint Cup regulars.

Of special interest will be the performance in the Penske Racing No. 22 car of Sam Hornish Jr., who’s been given the ride for the rest of the season after Penske fired A.J. Allmendinger, who’d twice flunked drug tests administered by NASCAR. If Hornish can finish high consistently, he’ll be in the car in 2013. Otherwise, expect Ryan Newman to join the team to drive that car.

That race, incidentally, can be seen on TSN2 at 1 p.m.

In NASCAR Canada competition, D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas will be looking to win his sixth race in a row at Trois-Rivieres on Sunday. However, he’ll be up against Andrew Ranger, who’s either won or finished close to the front in the last four or five years there, as well as defending series champion Scott Steckly and the rest of the Canadian Tire Series regulars.

The other TV race of interest this weekend will be the IZOD IndyCar Series race from the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on Sunday. It will be on ABC at 12:30 p.m. or on same-day tape-delay on TSN2 at 5 p.m., or after the NASCAR race, whichever comes first.

Have a happy and safe holiday weekend, everybody. I’m going to stretch my legs, too, and will resume writing sometime on Monday.

Schumi to Ferrari? Allmendinger rumours

Friday morning musings:

1. Ferrari has let the option to pick up Felipe Massa’s contract for 2013 lapse, which means he will not be in the team next year.

By interviewing Mark Webber for the job, Ferrari tipped that it’s looking for a solid second banana rather than a young speedster who would make Fernando Alonso uncomfortable.

There’s another veteran in F1 who doesn’t have a contract for next year. He’s fast — but not fast enough to really challenge Alonso — and he has strong ties to Ferrari.

I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility that Michael Schumacher could sign on for 2013 and then ride off into the sunset for the last time wearing Ferrari red.

2. A.J. Allmendinger has still not said anything about what made him flunk the NASCAR drug test. There are suggestions it had to do with emphetamines and his business people are pushing the “accidental” angle — that somehow, something he ingested legally put him over the line and it was all an accident. I’m hearing it was something else entirely. And that’s the problem: when there is no clear explanation forthcoming, the rumours start. Speak up, A.J., before it’s too late.

3. Danica Patrick told the media at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Thursday that she wants to do the “double” next U.S. Memorial Day weekend — the Indianapolis 500 as well as the Coca-Cola 600 — if the logistics can be worked out and she can get a good ride at Indy. She’ll be driving in the Sprint Cup series for Tony Stewart next year and he’s done it previously, so if she wants to try I can’t see him standing in her way. Who knows? Perhaps he’ll start laying the groundwork for the eventual establishment of an Indy car team to compliment his NASCAR team after he retires from driving. If Roger, Chip and maybe Michael can do it, why not him?

4. JR Motorsports has launched a contest around everybody’s favourite all-‘round Canadian driver, Ron Fellows, who will be competing for them at Watkins Glen and at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in the Nationwide Series in August. Go to www.JRMracing.com or www.Fellows5.com for contest details and questions. The Grand Prize is a three-day driving experience package at Ron Fellows Performance Driving School at Spring Mountain Motor Resort and Country Club outside Las Vegas.

5. While a lot of attention will be on Paul Tracy in the Daytona Prototype class this afternoon in the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, let’s not lose track of the fact that the AIM Autosport of Woodbridge Ferrari driven by Jeff Segal and Emil Assentato is very likely going to win the GT class in that race. Segal will start the race with the best race-win record in the series as well as the GT class championship points lead. Segal and the first-year AIM Autosport Team FXDD Ferrari program also have a series-best six GT podium finishes in the season’s first eight races, with only one result out of the top four all year.

6. I’ve been in the newspaper (and radio and TV) biz for longer than I can even remember. One of the things I was taught by my very first city editor, Jim Pauk, was to use language that people can understand. Ergo (that’s a fancy word for “therefore”), I can’t figure out why modern communication specialists (they used to be called “reporters”) have to copy down, or repeat, everything the way it’s written or spoken. This is particularly true when it comes to medical explanations. These days, you would think we are all doctors, the way things come out in the paper and on the web. Example. Charlie Kimball apparently crashed during an IndyCar test at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.  All the stories are reporting that he suffered a fracture of the fifth metacarpal of his right hand. Okay, I’m not stupid. I suspect he has a broken hand. But why not just say it? What the heck if a metacarpal? Same thing with broken legs. Why not say, “broken leg?” Why say, “fracture of the femur?”

7. Chevrolet announced Thursday that its NASCAR Nationwide Series car for 2013 will be the Camaro. The Camaro, as we all know, is built in Oshawa. Wouldn’t it be neat if the Nationwide Series and the Grand Am Rolex Series raced a double-header at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park next summer? Maybe everybody employed at GM Oshawa would get a free ticket so they could cheer on “Canada’s car!”

8. Okay – so this is my scenario for 2013: Continuing student unrest in Montreal forces F1 to review the Canadian Grand Prix. Its future there could be in jeopardy. So Montreal needs a new headline event for Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve. How about a NASCAR Sprint Cup race? This means the Nationwide Series event would be free to move to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. The Grand Am Rolex could support both. The NASCAR trucks could double-head with the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series at CTMP. Add the American Le Mans Series and the Canadian motorcycle championship and Summer 2013 at the facility north of Bowmanville could be non-stop action. I’m dreaming – but it’s a nice dream. (Oh, I have a sollution to the F1 problem. Coming Monday.)

Norris' racing blog: F1, ALMS, IndyCar

 At Edmonton, Helio Castroneves won the IZOD IndyCar Series race, with Takuma Sato second and Will Power third. Graham Rahal finished fourth and Alex Tagliani was fifth.

 

At Canadian Tire Motorsport Park:

 

Klaus Graf, who turned 43 on Saturday, and Lucas Luhr, who turned 33 Sunday, celebrated their birthdays at Canadian Park Motorsport Park by decimating the competition in winning their fourth consecutive American Le Mans Series race of the 2012 season and, for Graf and his Muscle Milk Pickett Racing team, their third straight at the Bowmanville-area track.

 

Chris Dyson of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Guy Smith of England finished second overall and second in the Prototype 1 class behind the two German drivers while Martin Plowman of England and David Heinemeier Hansson of Chicago were third overall and first in the Prototype 2 class.

 

Kyle Marcelli of Barrie was in position to be top Canadian but his Prototype Challenge car was rear-ended and knocked off the circuit by Smith with 25 minutes to go when he was running fourth overall and first in class, so he and co-driver Matt Downs of Butterfield, Minn., wound up 23rd out of 26 cars in the race.

 

Marcelli's exit meant Tony Burgess of Toronto was top Canadian, finishing third in the P1 class with co-driver Eric Lux of Williamsville, N.Y., and fifth overall driving a second team car for Dyson Racing.

 

While Marcelli was understandably angry with Smith, Burgess was elated at finishing on the podium, although with a little bit of luck he and Lux could have had a higher finish.

 

"We started out running third but then I got past (Chris) Dyson and was running second (behind Luhr, who drove the first half of the race before handing off to Graf) and then we had that big, long yellow and things kind of unravelled from there," he said, making reference to a penalty he received for speeding on pit lane when he stopped to top up his fuel.

 

"That put me at the back of the pack but I was making progress and then I handed off to Eric, who got us up to fifth overall. So it was good racing and I'm happy with the team and the team's happy with me and we plan to run two more races together this season, at Road America and then in the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta."

 

Jorg Bergmeister of Denmark and American Patrick Long finished first in the GT class in a Porsche 911 in the day's most exciting in-class race. Bergmesiter just held off the Ferrari of Johannes Van Overbeek of Oakland, Calif. (American Scott Sharp co-driving), who muscled his way past the Corvette of Jan Magnussen of Denmark (Antonio Garcia of Spain partnering) with five corners to go on the last lap.

 

But in post-race tech inspection, the Bergmeister/Long Porsche failed a test over the amount of air getting into the normally-aspirated engine and was disqualified, making Van Overbeek and Sharp the class winners. Joey Hand of Sacramento, Calif., and Dirk Muller of Germany, driving a BMW, moved up to third place with Magnussen/Garcia second. 

Other class winners: ex-Indy car star Bruno Junqueira of Brazil and Tomi Drissi of Hollywood, Fla, won the Prototype Challenge class while Emilio Di Guida of Venezuela and Spencer Pumpelly of Suwanee, Ga., were first in GT Challenge.

 

Graf owns the Canadian Tire track. On Saturday, he won his third consecutive pole position at what used to be called Mosport when he turned a blistering lap of one minute, 6.486 seconds around the 2.459-mile circuit, which translates into a speed of 133.147 miles an hour.

 

He won the race last year with Luhr as his partner; the year before, he had French driver Romain Dumas as co-driver.

 

``The track is very side and sweeping and has a lot of fast corners and I really like that,`` Graf told the Star in Victory Lane.  ``It really suits my style and the car (which has a Honda engine) is the total package and makes me very happy to come here.

`

``And the countryside around here (north of Bowmanville) reminds me of the Black Forest area of Germany where I come from so I feel very much at home every time I come here to race.``

 

Graf said the only problem the team had was a stop-and-go penalty for too many men over the wall during a pit stop but Luhr was well ahead after the first stint and they were in good shape ``so it really wasn`t any trouble.``  

 

The two-hour, 45-minute timed race was conducted under sunny skies following morning showers.

 

Dyson jumped the start and led Luhr into the first turn but five laps later was ordered to let his rival past him. From that moment on, except during caution periods, Luhr and later Graf had no trouble leading.

 

In fact, it was no contest. Although the official order of finish had the margin of victory 10.695 seconds, it could have been one second or an hour: there was never any doubt who would win.

Earlier,

Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr win the Grand Prix of Mosport.

Earlier,

It's been confirmed that Marcelli was hit in the rear by Guy Smith and knocked off the track.

Earlier,

Kyle Marcelli of Barrie is out off the Grand Prix of Mosport after either losing control, suffering a flat tire or being hit by another car while negotiating the backstretch at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park on the 101st lap.

Earlier,

Klaus Graf is leading the Grand Prix of Mosport by a mile, literally, and appears headed for his third consective ALMS victory at the track, now called Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

Guy Smith is second while Christophe Bouchut of France is running third in a Prototype 2 class car (Graf and co-driver Lucas Luhr are in a Prototype 1 car).

 Earlier,

A safety car was deployed and a full-course caution declared after a Corvette being raced by American Tommy Milner lost power heading up the backstretch and came to a halt. Millner was co-driving with Oliver Gavin of England in one of two Corvettes favoured to win the GT class.

The other Corvette, with Antonio Garcia of Spain driving with Jan Magnussen, continues to lead that class.

Earlier,

At the start of the sixth lap, race officials told Dyson to let Luhr past as the result of jumping the start. Luhr now leads and is pulling away. Burgess is still in third place.

Earlier,

Chris Dyson jumped the start and led Lucas Luhr through the first few laps as the Mobil 1 presents the Grand Prix of Mosport go under way today at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

Toronto's Tony Burgess was in third in the early laps and Barrrie's Kyle Marcelli moved up from eighth to sixth.

Earlier,

Sebastien Vettel has been penalized 20 seconds by stewards for an illegal pass of Jenson Button in the closing laps of today's German Grand Prix, dropping him to fifth place and promoting Kimi Raikkonen to third place.

Earlier,

Fernando Alonso won the German Grand Prix today over Sebastien Vettel and Jenson Button - although the stewards were meeting over Vettel because the world champion passed Button while using some of the Hockenheimring's runoff area that some say is not part of the racing surface.

It was Alonso's third victory of the 2012 season and extended his lead in the world championship.

Button's performance was his best since early in the season. His teammate, Lewis Hamilton, failed to finish. 

 

Earlier,

German racing driver Klaus Graf, who turned 43 Saturday, celebrated by winning yet another American Le Mans Series pole by ripping off a lap around Canadian Tire Motorsport Park of 1 minute, 6.486 seconds (133.147 miles an hour) that put him more than two seconds clear of his nearest rival. 

Graf was going so fast that his qualifying run included a "big-eye moment" halfway through Turn 2 when he nearly left the track.

 

"You have to be brave," to drive a good qualifying lap," Graf said later. "You have to pray once or twice" a lap he said, in describing how most of the former Mosport International Raceway's turns can now be taken flat out.

 

"It takes a lot of guts," he added.

 

Chris Dyson, who drove a Le Mans Prototype 1 like Graf, qualified second fastest at 1:08:637 (128.974 mph), a tick ahead of Eric Lux (1:08:746/128.770 mph). Canadian Tony Burgess will share the Lola B11 LMP1 entry with Lux.

 

Other pole winners and their times:

 

Martin Plowman led the P2 qualifyers, with a time of 1:08:853. He will start the race fourth overall. Colin Braun won the Prototype Challenge pole with a time of 1:10:698 and will start sixth overall, just in front of Kyle Marcelli of Barrie who will start eighth overall and third in the PC class.

 

Jan Magnussen will start from pole in the GT class. He turned a lap of 1:15:478 that translates into a speed of 117:285 mph. And last, but certainly not least, Damien Faulkner won the pole in the GT Challenge class with a time of 1:21:615/108:465 mph.

 

Graf, who won the last two Mobil 1 Presents the Grand Prix of Mosport races with co-driver Romain Dumas in 2010 and current co-star Lucas Luhr last year, said that although he doesn't think it's a good idea to be overconfident going into Sunday's main event, he knows how to won at the Bowmanville-area track.

 

"Both Lucas and I have been winners here many times, so it doesn't take us long to get up to speed," he said.

 

Faulknef, who won the pole in his class a year ago, said his team ran into trouble during Friday practice and the crew went through the car "with a fine-tooth comb," finishing the job after one o'clock in the morning. The car was up to the job in Saturday qualifying.

 

"This is a big, fast, flowing track," he said, "so the plan is to keep out of trouble and finish first (in class), hopefully."

 

Magnussen, who won his class a year ago in his GT Corvette, said the GM marque has always been fast around Mosport.

 

He said the only team orders he'd have to follow would be "to not crash into the other yellow car," but then added: "We have to play nice with each other . . . but there is a championship to win."

 

Colin Braun, who won the Prototype Challenge Class, didn't do his reputation any good when he took a totally unnecessary shot at Kyle  Marcelli. "Everybody thinks he's the world champion around here," he said, "so it's nice to beat him here."

 

The most interesting of the press conference drivers was Plowman, who's drivng full-time in the ALMS after a career in open wheel that included several races in the IZOD IndyCar Series. He said that it`s very rare to get the balance of a racing car exactly right and suggested it was like an out-of-body experience.

 

Àlthough 29 cars were entered, only 26 went out to qualify for the race that starts at noon Sunday. Burgess and Marcelli are the only Canadians in the field.

 

Meantime, in Edmonton, Ryan Hunter-Reay, who won the Honda Indy Toronto two weeks ago, showed he`s ready to try for his fourth victory in a row in that series when he won the pole Saturday for Sunday`s IZOD IndyCar Series race in Edmonton.

 

But because of the insane IndyCar engine-change rule that penalizes the driver when an engine goes kaput and has to be changed, he will start 11th Sunday, putting Dario Franchitti  on pole.

 

Alex Tagliani of Montreal qualified fifth and James Hinchcliffe qualified 12th.

 

Earlier . . .

Here's a quick update on other auto racing stories of note:

- Ferrari's Fernando Alonso won the pole for Sunday's German Grand Prix over Red Bull teammates Sebastien Vettel and Mark Webber.  Webber, however, will drop back five places because of a gearbox change, so fourth-fastest Michael Schumacher will go off third in his Mercedes, which will certainly make the fans at Hockenheimring happy. Nico Hulkenberg will start fifth for Force India.

There were no real surprises in qualifying, which started in dry conditions and ended in the rain, other than Felipe Massa and Romain Grosjean both failed to make it into the top ten. Massa keeps talking optimistically about his future at Ferrari but then he goes and turns in a sub-par performance. Grosjean has been one of the nicest surprises in F1 this season so his immediate future is secure.

- Marussia F1 announced that injured driver Maria de Villota has left hospital in England and returned home to Spain to continue her convalescence. She suffered severe head and facial injuries, including the loss of her right eye, in a testing accident several weeks ago.

- James Hinchcliffe of Oakville was fourth fastest and Alex Tagliani of Montreal was fifth behind pace-setter Helio Castroneves of Brazil in practice for Sunday's Edmonton IndyCar race. Qualifying will be held later today (Saturday).

Meantime, the last time racing drivers Townsend Bell and Bruno Junqueira were on a track together in the Toronto area, Junqueira was leaning over Bell's car and screaming at him.

Both drivers will be racing in Sunday's American Le Mans Series Grand Prix of Mosport but in 2002 they were both in the Molson Indy Toronto and had crashed together at the CNE circuit's treacherous Turn 3.

Bell had tried to pass Michel Jourdain Jr. going into the turn - a hard right off Lake Shore Blvd. W. onto a road leading up to BMO Field - and misjudged his speed. Bell couldn't make the turn and crashed into Junqueira, eliminating him from the race and costing him valuable points.

Junqueira jumped from his wrecked car and ran over to Bell's. He straddled the front of the car, put his finger up against the front of Bell's helmet and started yelling at him. It took the CART safety team to calm him down; Bell was subsequently disqualified and fined for reckless driving.

Bell, who will drive a GT-class Lotus-Cosworth in Sunday's ALMS main event, said Friday that he still has bad dreams about that accident.

"Every time I see Bruno, I think he still doesn't want to talk to me and it's beeen about 10 years (since it happened)," he said.

"I was far more aggressive and single-minded back then," said the now-veteran racer who includes an Indy Lights championship, a Formula 3000 podium, a Formula One test and six Indianapolis 500 starts on his curriculum vitae.

"I just expected back then that I should be at the front of every race all the time," said the California resident who acts as a pit reporter and race analyst for U.S. television networks when he's not in the cockpit.

"Even if I was 11th and one lap down (as was the case in 2002), and somebody was in front of me, I would go for it. Bruno was a lap ahead of us, and running in front of us, and we got to the turn and he took the traditional wide turn-in (popular with drivers running by themselves) and I was racing for position and ran out of road, ending his race in the process.

"I didn't feel good about it and he was understandably pissed off but he was so animated that there came a point where I was tired of listening to him shout at me so I called him back over to the car and let him know what I thought of his tirade, I think I called it his Brazilian enthusiasm, and that sent him into yet another tailspin.

"They (the safety team) got me going and I drove another couple of laps, only to find out that they'd disqualified me. I was out of a job shortly afterward."

Junqueira, who finished second to another Brazilian racer, Cristiano da Matta, in that year's CART championship, was not as forgiving and obviously still upset.

Asked about the circumstances Friday, as he prepared to practice for Sunday's race in an Oreca-FLM09-Chevrolet that will compete in the Prototype Challenge class, he initially said that he didn't mind racing against Bell again and the 2002 incident was history.

But then his eyes hardened and he said: "I was running for the championship; he was a lap down. He was a pay driver. An amateur!"

Junqueira has raced in the American Le Mans Series previously - he was at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park a year ago - but this will be a first for Bell, although he's been on the property previously and has a link to the legendary circuit.

"My father-in-law, Rod Campbell (formerly of Montreal and now of Santa Monica, Calif.) was the English-language announcer for the first Formula One Grand Prix of Canada back in 1967 at what was then called Mosport," said Bell, who was late getting to the track Friday after getting lost while commuting from his Peterborough-area hotel.

"And Rod and I came to Mosport four or five years ago to visit Walter Wolf, who'd entered one of his cars in a vintage car race here. Rod managed Wolf's F1 team for several years in the 1970s."

As well as the 29 entered American Le Mans Series cars, cars entered in the Canadian Touring Car Championship, Cooper Tires Prototype Lights, Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada and the Playboy Mazda MX-5 Cup series all practiced Friday, mostly without incident.

The first race of the weekend, the IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge, will go Saturday afternoon shortly after 1 p.m. American Le Mans Series qualifying will then be held, followed by more support races.

The Mobil 1 presents the Grand Prix of Mosport will go to the post at noon on Sunday. Whether Townsend Bell and Bruno Junqueira will give each other a wide berth remains to be seen.